


Senses

by Control_Room, Random_ag



Series: Tortured Tales [19]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Blindfolded, Child Abuse, Deafened, Forced Mutism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inspired By A Saw Trap, Karma - Freeform, Mausoleum Trap, Mentions of Murder, Payback, Regret, Repentance, Sensory Deprivation, Trapped, With A Twist, comeuppence, underage drugging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:20:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Four people are invited to confess.
Series: Tortured Tales [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023520





	Senses

Richard opened his eyes and saw absolutely nothing. He blinked, over and over. All around him was just black. He tried to move his arms, hitting something around him. He turned his head left and right, feeling his neck being tugged. He tried looking down to whatever it was.

Pure black.

“What the-” he hissed. His hands went to rub at his eyes and met instead some kind of hard fabric.

“Hello?” a terrified accented voice called. “Can anyone hear me? I can’t hear anything, I can’t hear--”

Richard tried to stand up. The thing around his neck tugged and clanged - a chain must have been connected to it. “I'm here.” he called back, realizing a little late that his voice would not be useful to reassure a deaf person. Though what did he care? He had his own problems to deal with.

His movement, however, proved itself rather successful in his attempt to be noticed, as the voice rose again in a simple exclamation, tinged with relief. He tried to direct his head towards his fellow ‘guest’ by following the sound.

“No one gives a damn if you’re here or not,” a pissed sounding voice replied. There were muffled noises followed by the woman who talked over the last of his words: “Well, he must have something to do with us. Who are you?”

“Who are you?” Richard shot back. Not seeing made him nervous. Terribly nervous. He could not trust any of these people without seeing them.

Of course, how could a deaf person answer that.

Only one other person spoke.

“Paul Hernández. And who are you, again?”

“Richard Derekson.”

“Never heard of you.

“Me neither. Who's the lady there?”

“My wife, Alesandra Ramirez.”

Someone made an indignant noise.

“No divorce or not, she’s not your wife anymore, because she hired me to kill you due to the fact you were an abusive dick.”

There was another noise of offence, the rhythm of the rise and fall very much like that of an outraged “I was not!”.

“I don’t know what you two are arguing about, but can we please act in a civilized manner to get out?”

Nobody answered her call.

It was perfectly silent. Kind of embarrassingly so.

He clumsily sat back on the ground, chain clanking softly. Pure silence was awful. It made him think over the words that had just been spoken.

Hired me to kill you.

She had hired me to kill you, Paul Hernández had just said. He got up, dusting off the back of his pants (even if there was no dust).

“So you’re a murderer.”

“By trade.”

“And what is she?”

“A lady.”

“Also by trade?”

“Close enough.”

Richard snorted, face twisting into a sneer.

“How much?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much for the ‘lady by trade’?”

“Are you asking me to give you my wife?”

“Yeah. For exactly what you’d do to a ‘lady by trade’,” Derekson laughed loud and viscid, in the rather rude and disgusting (though strangely charismatic) manner common to him. The other people within the room did not take well to it, and he found himself stumbling back, caught by the collar on his neck. “Hey, hey, don’t take it personal man!”

“You are speaking poorly about my wife and his ex-wife,” Paul snarled, grabbing him by his collar, but he slipped out of the man’s grasp. “Damn this quicksand!”

Muffled words drifted like unsharpened knives to Richard’s ears. He lazily turned to that direction, confident nothing could hurt him here.

“Who’s the other guy?” he asked, nodding his head where he vaguely heard the noises.

“That would be Atabulus Ramirez.”

“You guys Joey’s cousins or something?”

“Or something.”

“Did he say something about Johan?” Alessandra asked. Paul seemed to have nodded, for she continued, suspiciously; “How does he know Johan?”

“I worked for him,” Richard found a wall to lean against. Paul held back a noise of disgust in his throat, wanting the man to be unaware of what exactly he was touching. “Got fired by the music director, though, a real shame. I had a good thing going over there.”

Paul and Atabulus began to try to explain that to Alessandra, but were interrupted by a buzzing noise.

Voice speakers that Richard recognized from days past crackled on.

“Hello, you four motherfuckers,” Raymond Irving spoke, low and slow, clearly on a screen for Alessandra, likely with captions. Joey always was all about ‘accessibility’, the weakling bastard. Thinking of the man brought a scowl tinged by smugness to Richard’s face. “Welcome to hell.”

A muted laugh came somewhere from over Richard’s shoulder. He swatted away the man.

“You’re in here for what you have done,” Raymond intoned. “Your punishments are according to what you have done. What you have done will not save you here, but it can protect you.”

“So, how do we get out?” Paul demanded. “Tell me right this instant, or when I find you, I will subject you to a long, long death. How does starvation sound, Mr. Irving?”

“Your key to freedom is simple, Paul.” the animator replied, cold, unwavering. “Confess.”

“Confess?” Alessandra repeated, squinting at the screen.

“Confess. Admit to your wrongs, and I might find it in my heart to have the mercy to let you go. However, I am not known to be merciful… I am justice incarnate, and you have been brought here to be judged.”

Richard laughed. He laughed very loud. This was hilarious - just exhilarating. Confess, he said! Confess! Oh, why the hell not? Indeed he would confess! Why, he would tell him every little detail!

“Sure thing, Doc! Oh, sure thing!” he mocked him, “Wouldn't you like to know what I did to him, huh? Wouldn't you just love to hear how I almost nailed your sweet, soft loverboy down on me? Tough luck, asshole. I let him go without laying a hand on him.”

He waited, grin large on his half covered face.

The chain weighed still on his neck.

He waited another minute.

“Doc, the chain. Take it off. I fullfilled your stupid request.”

Raymond did not answer.

“Oh, so you really do want to hear it, huh?” Derekson hummed, smirking. “Does it turn you on, knowing what I did to Joey?”

“What did he do to my son?” Alessandra’s voice was icy cold. Oh. Son. Not cousin. Well, shit on that.

… ah, to hell with it. Not like she could do anything. She could barely hear him. The other two men in the room seemed to be staying silent, and Richard shrugged, smiling like a jackal.

“What… what did you do to Johan?” Paul’s voice was mostly bland, but within he could hear a tinge of curiosity. He did not see Atabulus circling around behind him like a snake coiling around its prey. Atabulus nodded to Paul. Richard sneered, “not telling. I said my confession to this lovely conglomerate of saints.”

“Fine, I’ll say mine, and if I’m still locked, then you speak again. Do we have a deal?”

“I want the lady to talk after you. What did she do, sneak into his room at night?”

Richard did not know how much he should have blessed karma for the fact that Alessandra was currently deafened, for had she heard him, she would have torn him limb from limb.

“I’ll see what she has to say about it.”

Richard rolled his eyes. Such a gentleman. Outside of his scope, Paul and Atabulus did their best to explain what was going to happen, and Atabulus wrote ‘confess’ on the wall using his shoe. There was no way he was going to touch it. Then he pointed at Paul, then Alessandra. She blinked, processing, and then she nodded.

“Okay. She agreed. So.” Paul looked up to ask air, “What exactly are we supposed to confess? I’m a mafia boss, I’ve killed over a thousand people, stolen and ransacked. It’s my job.”

No sound of chains releasing came to Richard’s ears, making him smile.

“Lady, shoot.”

“He wants you to confess, Alessandra.”

“I… I tried to not… I tried to not have Johan.”

A noise of surprise emanated from her first husband.

“I didn’t want him! I didn’t want him because I was afraid to treat him how I ended up doing!”

Silence fell over them, Alessandra’s gasps the only sound of life. That weight must have borne on her for a while. The sound of a single screw fell to the floor, but it seemed Alessandra was still trapped. There was a diffusion of the hydraulic muzzle, and an inhale.

“I take it that this is removed for me to confess,” a sultry voice murmured. Something about it made Derekson uneasy, and somehow riled, despite its soft honey tone. Or maybe because of. “I did my job. I was a good father and good doctor, perhaps not a good husband, but I did my jo--”

A mechanical snap. Atabulus tried to go on, but his words were muffled beyond recognition.

“Thank fuck he stopped talking,” Paul muttered.

A minute of silence fell.

“So we're all still here?” Richard asked, trying to hide the tone of triumph underlying his words.

A pair of grave affirmative hums reached him.

“My turn again then!” he started, recounting his assaults like a child proudly informing his peers of his latest endeavours. “Let's see what will get the doctor's rocks off tonight, eh?”

“You don’t need to be so crude about it,” Paul sniffed. “No matter what it is, there’s no need for vulgarity in this discussion. I like a bit of sadism here and there but not when lives are on the line.”

“It’s not my fault our delightful host apparently likes to hear tales of his sweetheart spreading those lovely lips of his to get deepthroated until his face turns blue.” Derekson snarled back, purposefully ignoring his request with a large disgusting grin. Atabulus froze in his prowling, and Paul shook his head, gently leading Alessandra away in case this ticked off the doctor enough to make him pounce. “That one’s a good one. I had just gotten fired, all because of him, so I thought to myself, now Dick, I'd say you deserve a nice, lavish parting gift, don't you agree? And so I went to his nice little office to wait for the darling thin thing, and when he finally arrived, I got him down, frail back against his own desk, pleading for mercy so weakly, sweetly--” He paused to laugh, wishing he could see the looks on the others faces. “Oh man, I bet you've never seen just how wide that pretty red mouth can get, huh doc? Bet you’d want to. I fucked his throat ‘till it bled and he took it all quietly. Well, not silently, but quiet. He was mewling like a kitten. ‘Course, that happened to be the time I got caught, but not before that pretty mouth took all I gave it.”

Richard gasped as, no, he was not released, but hands like claws dug into his back, expertly reaching between bone and flesh and scratching at nerves. He screamed and tried to get the rabid man off of himself, failing even with his strength and adrenaline, pulling harshly at his collar in an attempt to escape the doctor's deadly grip. Alessandra was crying out for Atabulus to stop, and Paul was silent, arms wrapped tight around his wife. Suddenly chains rushed and there was a yip of a dog getting yanked on its collar.

“Fuckin’ hell, doc,” Richard ground out through grit teeth. “You couldn’t’ve gotten him off before he tried to rip out my ribs?”

No one spoke. Paul stirred after some time.

“My previous confession was about the whole. I suppose I should be getting specific,” Paul sighed, rubbing his quicksand covered forehead. He could feel nothing, and trying to rip off the liquid clay resulted in tearing out a hunk of his own flesh. “Well, Johan, Johan… ah. When I first met the little bastard, his eyes unnerved me. They were wide, they stared, and they were red like blood. I wanted to put a bullet through him when I did his father in, but Alessandra requested that I not. Instead I invited my brother to watch him, constantly, knowing that it would be possible for him to have killed Johan either on purpose or accident. Instead Johan killed him.”

Paul took a moment to compose himself.

“I didn’t underestimate him after that.”

One screw fell loose from his collar. He lowered his head in rage, clasping his hands together.

“I take it I should speak again,” Alessandra sighed, covering her face, invisibly to Richard. “When Johan was young I would spike his food to put him to sleep, and I would slip out of the house to go anywhere else. Some nights I looked for someone to be with, never found anyone. When I gave up, I stopped drugging him, instead trying, at least, to be a better mother.”

Another screw fell from her.

“We were the best parents he could have asked for!” Atabulus interjected, speaking slow so that Alessandra could read his lips. “He would have killed others without us, or worse! Killed himself!”

“My not dear sir,” Ray interrupted him, speaking for the second time, “I have to politely ask you to shut the fuck up because I know from a reputable source that that's utter horseshit and you should feel ashamed of yourself and die alone in a ditch. With your ‘help’ he’s probably tried to take his own life more times than you have fingers. So unless you come up with a better confession than that, silence.”

“There is nothing to confess for, I saved his li--”

The muzzle snapped shut again, catching part of his lip in it. Atabulus cried out like a lame dog, hissing and whining, all screws still tight around his neck. There was a low roar of anger.

Paul and Alessandra turned to Richard. He felt the heaviness of their gazes on him, and perhaps because of how Atabulus had reacted to his previous tale, suddenly he was ever so slightly less inclined to speak again.

“It is your turn, Dick.” Paul incited him, using the same nickname he had used himself to remind the man of how proud he had been what seemed like a few seconds ago. “Go on now. Tell the class what you've done.”

Richard’s jaw seemed to have absorbed Atabulus’ mutism. It clenched, refusing to let him talk. The weight of their stares was unbearable; perhaps even worse to stand was the possibility that, behind the veil of his forced blindness, they were silently making fun of him.

He exposed his teeth as he curled into himself, already trying to protect himself from a possible next attack.

“I got so close to fucking him dry in the organ room.” he growled, lips struggling not to twitch into a smile. Paul held Alessandra, keeping her away from seeing what Richard was saying. “I had to fight to get there. I killed his friend because the weasel wanted to tip him off. That slim little bitch is insufferably stubborn - he should have just let me get what I wanted like the first time, instead of getting all cocky like that. I had to slam his fucking head on that goddamn door first, the floor, and then that damned keyboard. He got lucky that I like it hot and messy, hell, I like it anyway as long as I get what I want, because if it wasn't for that I would have killed him as soon as he had the gall of fighting back. But no, he had to make it difficult, he had to thrash and try to run and keep spitting out the soft gag I shoved in his mouth. He had to blow up at me.”

He closed upon himself like a hedgehog when Atabulus’s nails sunk in his leg and ripped it away as the dead doctor was yanked back, Richard only partly choking a scream of anguish as the flesh was opened in the claws’ wake. Richard flailed blindly, reaching down to his leg, feeling the gore ooze.

“Your turn, Paul.” he hissed. The blood dripping off his wounds left the stench of iron in the air.

“I have no regrets when it comes to Johan.” Paul admitted, raising his head with a deep frown. “None. The carving in his back? The beatings? The drugging, the prostitute? The starvation? The labor? His child? I’d do it all again. I’d continue. I'd break him until those big, stupidly wide eyes of his would close for good. I'd kill him, but this time along with his father, before he’d have killed my brother. Nothing good would have ever come from him.”

Alessandra waited for him to let her know it was her turn. She grabbed both her arms to shield her chest, shoulders closing in on her figure. She shook only slightly.

“I was not a good mother. I can’t count all the times that I failed with Johan. But that’s behind me.” she inhaled, wiping her eyes, straightening her back. “However, I will say that I would never, ever do any of it now. I probably wouldn’t have if I was in a good mind. I wish I could get a do over.”

The sound the screw made when it hit the floor was a twinkling, shining, bright noise. It was the sound of a silver key gracefully falling on well polished crystal floors. Alessandra could not hear it. Paul and Atabulus made sounds of surprise.

“I’m…” Alessandra reached to her throat. “I’m sorry.”

The collar fell docile into her hands.

Atabulus roared behind his muzzle in an attempt to defend his parenting for the third time, purposefully blind to his wrongdoings and hissing madly to convince Alessandra that they had done good, that their treatment of Johan had been right, that it was not her nor his fault that he was so ungrateful towards them.

However she was gone. Within the inside of the collar had been a key, and a door had appeared. Even Richard could see her shadowy figure stand on unsteady knees and shakily unlocking the door that was built around her form precisely, despite Paul and Atabulus pleading with her to stay. Her body obscured the light - and then she was free.

Alessandra straightened her back and did not look behind herself as she walked through into the clean light and air.

A hand warmly grasped her own, shaking it happily.

“Congratulations,” a person told her. Their voice did not sound like anything she had ever heard before. “You’ve done it. Here is a recording of your trial.”

“My trial?” she asked. Her eyes tried to grasp their appearance in vain. Her hands clapped to the sides of her head-- she could hear. “Oh, dear heaven….”

“Welcome to said location,” they informed her. “I am rather happy to see you here.”

Their hand gently pushed the recording in her palm.

“You should watch this.” she felt a moment of dread, but also warmth. “It will not be pleasant, and it is your choice, but it may lead to something you’d like.”

She trusted them.

Alessandra instinctively found where to watch the recording.

She listened. Listened closely. Her body slowly turned more and more rigid with every word the men around her had spoken, with the plain honest cruelty of their every word. None of them regretted hurting her son the way they had. None of them regretted their actions.

It did not make her scream or burst to flames. It hardened her into unbreakable rock, a spiked diamond in the rough.

She marched to the angel who had greeted her.

“Give me a shotgun.” she demanded of them. “Give me a shotgun so I can decimate those utter shitbags who dared touch my son.”

The angel smiled at her.

***

The men were as she left them, still bolted tightly. Alessandra did not move yet, only watched. ‘Ray’ was not there at all. He never had been. The angel had told her that soon they too would experience the brutality they had unleashed, watching their own words, and if they still did not accept their fault, then she would gain full access to do as she pleased.

She said nothing.

She simply watched.

They watched too. Watched, felt, and tasted their own confessions with the eyes, ears and heart of their victim. She could feel how the pain stung horrendously in the grimaces of their faces, in the way their arms jolted to defend themselves. But none admitted what they had done was wrong. Richard even seemed to enjoy it at times, grinning and smirking like the disgusting garbage excuse of a human being he was.

Her hand tightened around the mace.

No regret came from them.

She would avenge her son, through battle cries and broken bones.

She would avenge him.


End file.
